Internet Safety

All children should be monitored when using the Internet…a child’s bedroom is not a good place for an Internet connection.

Set up guidelines with your child about the use the computer and the Internet.

Spell out an agreement so you child knows exactly what the rules and expectations are.

Check the browser history frequently to see the sites where family members are going.

Consider setting filtering and or blocking parameters.

Children should never give out private information, such as your last name, address, phone number, information about family members or financial information without asking a parent for permission.

Children should never give out information about their school without permission from an adult.

Understand how to navigate safely with browsers and portals designed for students.

Children should never agree to meet face-to-face with anyone you’ve met online.

If anything inappropriate (a picture, advertisement or email) or threatening comes on the screen, an adult should be notified immediately.

Children should never give out a password.

Children should ever email a picture without adult permission.

These rules should always be followed at home, at school, at the library or at a friend’s house.

Parents need to set a good example when it comes to using the computer and the Internet.

In a study of 4 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 who use the Internet, 29% indicated they would give out their home address and 14% would give out their email address if asked (NOP Research Group, 2002).

81% of parents of online teens say that teens aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online and 79% of online teens agree with this (Pew Internet & American Life Project, March 17, 2005).

Approximately 89% of sexual solicitations of youth were made in either chat rooms or through Instant Messaging (Pew Study reported in JAMA, 2001).

1 in 5 youth ages 10 to 17 received sexual solicitation or approach in last year (Online Victimization, NCMEC, June 2000).

“30% of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom. Only 7% told their parent because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

“86% of the girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57% could read their parents’ e-mail, and 54% could conduct a cyber relationship” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 50,000 sexual predators are online at any given moment (Dateline, 2006).

42% of parents do not review the content of what their teenager(s) read and/or type in chat rooms or via instant messaging (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz, June 2005).

95% of parents didn’t recognize common chat room lingo that teenagers use to let people they’re chatting with know that their parents are watching. Those phrases are POS (parent over shoulder), P911 (parent alert), BRB (be right back), LOL (laughing out loud) and A/S/L (age/sex/location) (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz, June 2005).

30% of parents allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house such as a bedroom or a home office. Parents say they are more vigilant about where their teen(s) go online if the computer is in a public area of the household (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).

Nearly three out of 10 (28%) of parents don’t know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).

One-third of youth ages 8-18 have talked about meeting someone they have only met through the Internet (Polly Klaas Foundation, December 21, 2005).

Half of teens ages 13-18 often communicate through the Internet with someone they have not met in person (Polly Klaas Foundation, December 21, 2005).

Almost one in eight youth ages 8-18 discovered that someone they were communicating with online was an adult pretending to be much younger (Polly Klaas Foundation, December 21, 2005).

65% of all parents and 64% of all teens say that teens do things online that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about (Pew Internet & American Life Project, March 17, 2005).

The adult Internet porn industry estimates that some traffic on their sites is 20–30% children (NRC Report, 2002).

Over half (51%) of parents either do not have or do not know if they have software on their computer(s) that monitors where their teenager(s) go online and with whom they interact (NCMEC/Cox 5/24/05).

70% of teens online have accidentally come across pornography on the Web (The Kaiser Family Foundation).

Nine out of 10 children aged between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet. In most cases, the sex sites were accessed unintentionally when a child, often in the process of doing homework, used a seemingly innocent sounding word to search for information or pictures (London School of Economics January 2002).

The largest group of viewers of Internet porn is children between ages 12 and 17 (Family Safe Media website, 2006).